


Life’s Too Short

by Wealthywetsunny



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Cyberpunk Slang, F/M, Minor Spoilers for Alt and Johnny’s background, Soulmate AU, Soulmates, V and Johnny have a little chat, fear of dying, shared pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:33:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28171725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wealthywetsunny/pseuds/Wealthywetsunny
Summary: V makes the mistake of asking if Johnny ever found his soulmate.
Relationships: Alt Cunningham/Johnny Silverhand, Johnny Silverhand/Female V
Comments: 4
Kudos: 110





	Life’s Too Short

“Did you manage to find your soulmate before you...you know…?”

“Flatlined? Got zeroed? _Died.”_ He stresses the last syllable and it makes her flinch. “It’s okay, V, you can say it, I’ve come to terms with what I did. Fifty years is a long time to think about that kinda shit when you’re just floating in cyberspace with no concept of time.” 

She sucks in a breath, looking down at Night City spread out before them. All lit up as the moon makes an appearance, her legs dangling off the ledge she’s sat on. “Right. Yeah.” 

She doesn’t hear him more then _feel_ him sit down next to her. There’s a long stretch of silence and she figures he won’t answer, that the topic will be dropped and soon forgotten about. 

V certainly wouldn’t blame him. It’s a touchy subject. 

But he just sighs and rubs at his eyes like he’s exhausted. Probably is. That’s how she feels at least. She thinks they’re connected in that regard, all those messy feelings playing out between their two heads. 

“I did. Took a while, guess I can’t complain though, lots of people don’t find their soulmate. Live their whole useless lives wishing upon a lucky star doin’ fuck all to even change their situation, hoping fate will bring them together and they just die eventually.” He pauses to breathe, doesn’t notice that she’s staring at him intently now. “That’s not to say I wasn’t hoping too, hard not to, but at least I was tryna change the world y’know? I was making it a better place for her.”

“Her,” V echos dully, trying not to make it sound like a question. Or, god forbid, that she’s too interested. He always gets this smug sort of pride whenever she indulges him in idle chatter about the way of the world and what _he_ would have done if he had been in her shoes. 

Now though? He just nods, shifting slightly to produce a cigarette from seemingly out of nowhere. She watches him light it and take a drag, smoke pluming from the fire red cherry that flares between his lips. 

“Yeah, you saw her, actually. When you were digging through my brain.”

“Not my choice.”

“I know. I know.” He glances at her, face impassive even though his voice is tight. 

“I heard it hurts when your soulmate dies. Like you’re dying right along with them.” She turns to face him, folding her opposite leg on top of her knee. “I think that’s part of what makes me so scared of dying, knowing that I’m causin’ ‘em so much pain and eventually I’ll be gone, which hurt them even more.” Her fingers itch to light up her own cigerrete—Johnny’s brain is fucking her up, making her fall for an addiction she’s never had. “Did you ever feel guilty when you flatlined?”

“No.” His fingers clench on his knee, “she didn’t feel a thing. I’m the one who went through it. I can say it hurts, not gonna lie about that, it feels like your heart’s exploding and your soul is ripping apart.”

“Oh. Oh, Johnny, I’m so sorry—“

“It’s fine.”

It doesn’t sound fine though. When she peers a little more closely at him he’s trembling, leg swinging out and metal fingers clenching at open air every so often. 

“Did you get to know her before she passed?”

“Zeroed,” he bites the word out like it physically hurts. In fact she knows it does, his memories are getting strong, fueled by the sudden surge of emotions she’s putting him through and images are popping into her head without her say so. She feels his pain. “She was murdered, V, killed by corpo Arasaka scum. They did it to get at me, I know they did.”

He flicks his cigarette off the ledge and they watch it disappear midair, never there to begin with. 

“Everyone else said otherwise but,” he shrugs, “the fuck do they know, right?”

V nods. Scared to poke the monster she awakened. It was her own fear that made her ask, and now she’s paying greatly for it. 

“You said I saw her? Who was she?”

“Alt Cunningham.”

V’s heart clenches a little in pity. She didn’t know or she wouldn’t have fucking brought it up. It seems like an oversight now, because she had felt Johnny's emotions like they were her own during the rundown of his memories, and when he was with Alt moments before her kidnapping there was something inside him that she couldn’t identify. The kind of longing and love that V has never experienced herself. 

The kind of emotions you tuck away only for your soulmate. 

“What was she like?”

Johnny smiles, just a subtle uptick of the corners of his lips, but it’s there all the same. “Like heaven and hell wrapped in one. She made me so mad sometimes, and I could be cruel when I wanted to be, but I loved her. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, but only in the most perfect world that didn’t exist. One I was trying to create. Don’t get me wrong, soulmate or not I would’ve opposed Arasaka at every turn, but with her by my side I had even more reason to do so.” 

He falls quiet again, thinking hard going by the crinkle in his brows. He shifts his weight, a practiced action that she’s seen him do countless times when he needs another hit, but he pauses midway. 

“Do you mind smoking for me?” 

She quirks an eyebrow and silently obliges. Watching him relax before her eyes as the nicotine fills her bloodstream. 

“She hated me, I think.”

“Johnny—“

“It’s my fault she died too, if I hadn’t kept poking my nose around in corpo business then they wouldn’t have taken her.”

V looks away from his angry expression. She doesn’t want to point out that his friends at the time didn’t seem to think so. Apparently Alt was in deep shit all on her own, it was just a bonus that she was the soulmate of Arasaka’s number one hater. 

“Guess I’ll never know, though, no point in rehashing it.” 

End of discussion then, she gets the message loud and clear. She swings her legs up and back onto solid ground, hands settling on her knees for a moment before she pushes herself up. 

Johnny stops her. 

“V?”

Her footsteps pause but she doesn’t look back at him, she’s not sure she’d be able to handle whatever emotion is reflecting in his eyes. 

“Don'tchu worry about your soulmate and you dying, all that crap. We’re gonna to save you, okay? They’re not gonna feel a thing.”


End file.
